So Eden sank to Grief
by Aleanbh
Summary: Tag to 7x10, Nothing Gold Can Stay. Lisbon watches Cho fall to grief of Vega.


_"Rookie agents are seen, and not heard."_

His words from earlier in this endless day hang over him, as the machines beep on around her, as they fall painfully silent. As they fuss around her and then leave her alone. She will not be seen now, nor will she be heard.

She is gone, for no good reason. She has not died a hero's death, has not lost her life for some noble cause. She has just been unlucky, a victim of circumstance. She deserved more. She deserved to go home tonight, exhausted and fatigued by his insistence they canvass all the locations today. She didn't deserve to be going in a box.

He has been re-reading the Romantics lately. Looking on at her colding corpse now he sees they have been lying. They seem to find beauty in all things, but they have let him down, for there is no beauty in this death. She had been attractive in life, beautiful, even. Her young smooth skin is unblemished still, but greyer now, paler. The blood in her veins is cold. She is dead. She is gone, but she had barely arrived. She is young and she is dead. This cannot be real and yet her body is laid out before him. His Romantics have let him down. He will not give her their treatment. She is dead and he is alive, and that is all. Things have happened and cannot be undone, no beautiful words will make this any more bearable.

He is lost in thought, lost in what is before him.

She nudges him and he is aware of her hand brushing over his elbow, over his bloodstained suit jacket. "Cho," she says, but he does not raise his head, is somehow unable to lift his eyes from her silent, unreal corpse.

"Kimball." The hand is firmer now, turns him. "Look at me."

He does not recall consciously turning from Vega, but he finds himself looking at Lisbon somehow, facing her, her two hands at his arms, holding him in place. He finds they are alone in the room. Looking past her he sees Abbott and Jane outside, looking in. He registers the dread, the disbelief, all the things he's been trying to stop himself feeling, reflected in her eyes. He sees the tear tracks down her cheeks paled by shock, and he finds himself pulling her to him, roughly, finds her staggering slightly, unsteady under his weight, feels her breathe shallowly, unsettled by this from him.

He finds himself willing that he could pass the other weights upon him on her, to relieve himself, for just a moment, of the guilt that he feels. He knows he has done no wrong and yet, _and yet_.

He stands back, straightens his jacket. They both pretend not to see her blood seeping through from his shirt.

"This shouldn't have happened," he says.

Lisbon says nothing.

She finds him later, back in the office, alone in a interrogation room. He sits on the floor, his back pressed up against the wall. She enters the room wordlessly, sits down beside him.

They are quiet for a long while.

"How're you holding up?" he asks her then.

"I don't know," she says. "I never know. These things never feel real while they're happening."

He grunts his agreement.

More silence.

"And you?" she asks, carefully, fully aware that this is Cho, that this is something they just do not do.

"This happened on my watch."

"No."

"It did."

" _Cho_."

"Lis-"

" _No_. This is _not_ your fault. Don't you _dare_ insult her memory by claiming that it was."

He looks at her, curiously, as though intrigued at her words and her nerve after this day. She stands up from the floor, marking this change in the exchange.

"She looked up to you, yes, but you were _not_ her minder. She was a Rookie, alright. That she was, Cho, but she was not under your care. She was a good agent, both with _and_ without your help."

She looks down at him, shrugs. "She certainly wouldn't be happy to hear you thinking otherwise."

He is quiet, then nods.

"You were good to her, Cho, really. She appreciated it, she did. It was good. You did good."

More silence.

"Right. Let's go do our jobs." She holds a hand out to him and helps pull him up from the floor, struggling slightly for the second time this day. "Let's do it."

Lisbon pulls open the door of their cocooned interrogation room and he follows her out. Just before, in that moment before the world had stopped, she'd scolded him for not giving his job more enthusiasm. Following Lisbon out the door, on the path to putting _her_ , putting _this_ to rest, he swears he will follow this through, as she had said, and he will do so today for her.


End file.
